Impetus (20 page)

“
What’s going to happen to us?” Sandeep asked bluntly.

Sid removed the device from Mick
’s skin. He paused, seemingly looking for the correct way to say it. “Your body will begin to break down from the inside. You’ll experience an increasing sensation of weakness, followed by organ failure. Your lungs will be the first to deteriorate. And then—” He stopped.

“
And then we die,” Greg said. “That’s just great.”

Sid bowed his head momentarily. He then said,
“But like I said. There is hope. If one of you shows no sign of the CV-1 virus, then you are the road to a cure. The accelerant wouldn’t have an effect on you because it would have nothing to accelerate.”

“
So that thing you have there,” Greg said, pointing to the cell scanner in Sid’s hand, “that will tell you if one of us is immune to this thing?”

“
Yes,” Sid said.

Greg rolled up his sleeve.

Sid then scanned Greg. It was clear as the sky once was that Greg carried the virus. He then scanned Laurel, followed by Chester and Sandeep. They, too, were infected.

“
I’m scared, Dad,” Nate said before being scanned. “I don’t want to die.”

Mick pulled his son to him. He then did the same for Kathryn. He kissed them both on the head
s and then nodded for Sid to scan them. When done, Mick hanged his head and kissed them again, resting his head on theirs. They lived as a family and they would soon die as one.

“
I realize this is a morbid thought,” Mick said. “But we don’t have many options at this point. What about Sarah?”

“
Where is Sarah?” Sid asked.

They all looked to the tarp at the back o
f the room, lifeless and still.

Sid followed their glance
s. He said nothing.

Mick said,
“She died in this past storm. Can you scan her?”

Sid nodded and made his way to the tarp. He very carefully pulled aside enough of it to gain access to her bloodied arm. He scanned and then turned,
shaking his head.

“
Now what?” Greg said. “We just wait around to die? This really sucks.”

“
No,” Sid said. “There are others that were sent the same package as you. Those groups injected themselves well before you, though. Days before in some cases.” Sid pulled out the tracker. “This is how I found you. Each dose contained a nanotracker. And this is how we will find the others. Maybe, just maybe, one of them has what we need.”

CHAPTER
27
 

Mick snuck out first while the rest of the group was finishing up with their final good-byes to both Sarah and their home. He wanted his final good-bye to Sarah to be a bit different from the others. He went to one knee and pushed away the dust where Sarah tended to her pseudo-garden. He took the time to thoroughly remove as much as he possibly could, down to the cracked soil, as he had seen Sarah do time and again. It came as no surprise that nothing had grown there. But he wished, in some mystical, Chester-type way, that something had sprouted from the infertile land. A transcendent sign from Sarah that she was in a better place.

He
stood from the garden and gave it one final look. He then gazed up the hill where he had spent countless hours of his time. Maybe the billboard had found a way to survive the storm. He had not given it much thought lately. Not with everything that had been going on. Even from where he stood, he could always see the billboard’s outline among the haze. But as he’d feared, this storm had been the one to finally win the long-waging battle. It seemed so trivial to be upset about an inanimate object. But somewhere buried deep inside him, everything compounded upon itself, and this was just one more addition. One too many.

The rest of the group
members made their way out of the shelter over the next ten minutes.

Mick wanted to
trust Sid. He really did. But there were too many red flags to fully commit. He could not shake the fact that Sid was part of the lie that was ultimately speeding up their deaths. But at the same time, he was also the only one who could help them. It was a terrible situation that seemed to have no right choice to make within it. So Mick put off making a decision on Sid for now. They needed to get away from the shelter and find those other groups.

Sandeep
, ever the teacher, took the opportunity to question Sid about his life, The Facility, their science. His scientific mind was able to look past Sid’s hand in all of this.

“
And your team truly believes they have a cure for cancer?” Sandeep asked.

“
Not my team, necessarily. But the oncology team thinks they found a cure. They derived it from genetically modified radishes of all things. It’s a radical change from what I had seen them working on. But they did make more progress in the ten years since Impact than they had in the fifty years prior. There were no political hoops to jump through. No government agencies to worry about. Our science was unimpeded, so to speak. “

“
See what that gets us?” Greg said, walking past the two. “A deadly virus. It doesn’t matter much what other diseases have been fixed. We’ll all be dead soon. Then nobody will have to worry about nothin’.”

Sid turned,
“We didn’t create the virus. We were trying to eradicate it.”

“
That’s true,” Alex said, walking up the hill from behind the group. “
We
didn’t create the virus.”

“
Alex!” Sid said. “What the hell are you doing here?” He walked over to him and hugged him, patting his back.

“
I came to help,” Alex said.

“
I can’t believe you left. How did you get Phillip to open the doors?”

“
Oh, man. You should have seen it. I made a big scene in front of everyone. You know how he hates that.” Alex smiled. “I left him with no choice but to let me out the front door. It was either that or he’d look like the liar he is in front of everyone.”

“
I would have loved to see it,” Sid said.

“
This someone else from The Initiative?” Mick asked.

Sid
nodded. “This is Dr. Alex Cole. We’ve known each other for what seems like forever. I trust him without reservation.”

“
Well,” Greg said, walking past them both and toward the hill, “I don’t trust either of you.”

Alex
looked to Sid. “I’m assuming they know about the accelerant?”

Sid nodded.

Alex then leaned in closer. “Listen, I have some disturbing news.”

“
What could be worse than what we already know?”

“
How about the fact that the virus wasn’t introduced by Colossus? It’s man-made.”

“
What?”

“
I never would have known if my tablet hadn’t died. One of the tech crew gave me a loaner while he repaired mine. He was in such a hurry that he didn’t notice that the tablet was still logged in as someone else. Conveniently, it was Phillip who had used it last.”

“
So what did you find?”

“
Like I said, the virus was man-made. And the man who made it was Phillip.”

“
Wait,” Mick said, overhearing the muted conversation quickly ramp up. “So this stuff inside us was not just more bad luck?”

Alex
shook his head. “I’m sorry. It turns out our boss was more evil than any of us thought.”

“
But why?” Sid asked. “Why would he do something like that? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“
That I don’t know,” Alex said. “I dug around as much as I could before the tech came back. He was frantic. He must have realized what he had given me. I played stupid. I didn’t need Phillip finding out that I knew until it was too late for him to do anything about it.”

Greg
said, “So let’s go pay this Phillip guy a visit.”

“
It won’t be that easy,” Sid said. “There’s no way he’s going to let us back into The Facility. And the others inside The Facility won’t complain. Phillip will paint us as infected and a risk to all their lives. And The Facility can’t be accessed aside from the two sets of doors.”

“
And those are now on admin lockdown,” Alex said. “Only Phillip has the authorization to open them. And I don’t think he’s about to do that.”

Mick paused and thought about the situation.
Knowing where the virus actually came from made no difference in their situation. They were all still infected. The minutes were still counting down. And there was still no cure. Mick did not have the luxury of hate at the moment.

CHAPTER
28
 

The herd walked down the hill like a procession of sullen elephants, numb, muddled in their own thoughts about everything that had so quickly transpired. Each second felt more precious. Each breath held in a bit longer for fear it could be the last.

“
Where are we going, Mick?” Laurel asked as they carefully traversed the hill down toward the remains of the city.

“
Our priority, obviously, is to locate the other groups. But we need supplies first. Let’s head to that yellow house I told you all about and see what’s there. We’ll be quick about it.”

Mick
made the decision to go left, down by the Charles River, and loop back around to the yellow house. It was best to draw as little attention to themselves as they could. When the Rubble King and his crew had left Mick, they’d headed back the way he had originally come, down by the old police station that Solomon vanished into. And he wasn’t about to go parading by there.

The trip to the yellow
house was uneventful. For that Mick was thankful. After the night they had been through, and what they had lost, the last thing any of them needed was more strife. The herd filed down the road, checking all the windows and rooftops as usual.

Chester scurried up next to Mick
as he stopped the group at the house, number eighty-eight.

“
Is this the place?” Chester asked.

Mick
nodded.

“
I know this house,” Chester said.

“
You do?”

“
Yes. This was Stella Murphy’s house. Not sure it was one hundred percent legal, but she ran an orphanage out of it. The neighborhood embraced her. And her kids loved her. She was a wonderful woman. I’d come here once a month to bring the children toys that my parishioners had donated. They always loved to see me coming.”

The picture that
Solomon showed him flashed in his mind. The lady in all the pictures must have been Stella Murphy. And Mick assumed that made Solomon an orphan. It also explained why Solomon had such a love for this house. His mind wandered to the memory of Solomon’s fright when King had shown up.

Mick
said, “Do you remember a young kid named Solomon?”

“
Oh,” Chester said. “The man you met the other day?” Chester thought for a moment. “I don’t recall his name. But this was a very busy house. Overcrowded would be putting it lightly. Stella committed her life to helping those children find some glimmer of hope in their otherwise dreary lives. She spent every penny of her savings to raise those kids.” He paused and sighed. “I can only imagine what happened to all those young lives after, well, the meteorite and everything.”

Greg walked up
to the door and attempted to look through the same windows that Mick had when he’d first came here. The blinds were still drawn. Everything looked the same except for a larger amount of dust attached to everything.

“
It should be open,” Mick said.
Or at least it was last time
, he thought.

Greg looked back at Mick
and nodded. He then slowly opened the creaky door. He peaked his head inside. “All clear,” Greg said, waving them in.

One by one, the group
entered the house. Mick closed the door behind them, taking a look out of the front door’s window to make sure they had not been seen entering. He could not see anyone among the dust and nothingness, but he realized that did not mean they were alone.

Nate looked to Chester and said,
“Did you tell Dad this place was an orphanage?”

“
Yes, Nate. This is where people without hope tried to find some.”

Nate slowly nodded and looked around.
“Seems like a good place for us then, huh?”

Chester patted him on the back.
“Indeed.”

Without
his head racing with questions about Solomon, Mick could now fully take in just how tiny the house was.

“
How many kids did you say lived here?” Mick asked Chester.

“
Hard to say. The number changed all the time. Kids were coming and going. But I’d guess no less than fifteen children at one time.”

“
In this house?” Mick said. He found it hard to believe. They were only nine of them in there now and it felt confining.

“
Stella made the most out of her situation. It was something she taught her children, too. Like I said, I spent a good amount of time here when I was able to. She ingrained in the children that it didn’t matter what you had in life. What mattered is what you made out of your life.” He walked into the living room and stared at the wall of pictures, fixing one that was terribly crooked. “She was a good woman, Mick. One of the best.”

“
Was?” Mick said. “You don’t think she is still around?”

Chester turned from the wall of memories and
faced Mick. “No. I doubt it very much. She loved this house, as tiny as it is. She would never leave unless she was left with no choice.” He eyed the interior quickly. “I can only assume she has passed on to the next life. God rest her soul.” He signed the cross.

Mick
caught sight of the picture of Stella with Solomon. He had not noticed at the time, but Solomon was smiling in the picture. It was impossible to tell, of course, but he seemed genuinely happy standing next to the woman. A far cry from the expression of the man he had encountered only days ago. Where was he now? Was he all right? Did King harm him? All of these questions with no answers. No matter how hard he tried to focus, his attention, rightfully so, kept going back to their own bleak ordeal.

Sandeep walked down the stairs, closing a door behind him that separated t
he upper floor from the floor they were now on. A large puff of dust spit from the change in air as the door closed. “The upstairs is a mess,” he said. “Part of the roof fell in. No use going up there.”

“
All right,” Mick said. “Let’s get what we came for. I don’t want to spend more time here than we need to.”

Mick
pushed past the group and back into the hall. He walked into the dining room. The rug was just as Solomon had left it. He bent down to lift the rug, making his back crack. It seemed that turning fifty had flipped some imaginary switch in his body. His bones had cracked more in the past few days, and his arms and legs had ached more than usual. The joker in him made light of the situation. At least he would not have to deal with that much longer.

He
flipped the rug over to reveal the trapdoor that Solomon had shown him a couple of days before.

“
In here,” Mick said, signaling the group.

Greg exited the smal
lish kitchen. He stood beside Mick and looked down at the trapdoor. “This is it?”

Mick
nodded. Now that they were at the yellow house, Mick felt gun-shy about opening the trapdoor. He knew in his heart that Solomon was good. He’d seen it in his eyes, and the eyes never lied. But who was to say that someone did not come back after they’d left? What if this door was now very literally a
trap
door?

There was no time for second
-guessing. Mick bent down and lifted the surprisingly heavy door. He then peered into the hole in the floor. “I can’t see a thing.” It would do him no good to feel around a dark room.

Mick turned to Sid and
Alex. “You wouldn’t happen to have a flashlight?”

“
No,” Alex said. “Sorry.”

“
Neither do I,” Sid said. “I didn’t put much thought into my packing.”

Of course not.

Sandeep appeared from behind Mick. He looked over his shoulder and into the dark pit. He seemed mesmerized by the dark hole, but Mick had seen that look on his face many times before. He knew what he was thinking.

Sandeep said,
“This was once an orphanage?”

“
That’s what Chester said, anyway.”

“
Hmm,” Sandeep said. “I may have a solution.” He looked unsure. “It’s a bit of a stretch, but I did this experiment with my kids in school every year. They always got a kick out of it. Like magic. But that was then. And this is the now, without the tools we probably need.”

“
Listen,” Mick said. “Nothing is off the table at this point. What do we need?” He had learned not to question Deep when he was on to something. Just help out when he could and let the science teacher do his work.

“
Since this house was once an orphanage, I assume the children had crayons. See if you can find some.”

“
What are the other things you need?” Mick asked.

“
I will also require some steel wool and a nine-volt battery.”

“
Oh, that’s it?” Greg said sarcastically.

Sandeep smiled.
“And a cup of hot coffee if you happen upon it.”

Greg smiled back.
“All right, guys,” he said to the rest of the group. “You heard the man. Let’s find the impossible.”

Alex
said, “I see where you are going with this. Inventive idea.”

The herd fanned out and began to ransack
the house. Much to Mick’s surprise, Nate found a box of crayons, or what was left of the box, anyway. The cardboard had almost completely deteriorated, but it held within it two crayon pieces, one yellow and one blue.

The steel wool was the
next item found.

“
Will this do?” Chester asked as he came back into the house from the rear deck. He’d found a small swath of steel wool, about the size of his thumb, beneath a pile of rusty metal chairs on the back deck.

Fate seemed to be smiling on them
for a change. When Sandeep had first told them the items he would need, Mick deemed the idea dead from the start. Where were they going to find these things? But they did. Somehow, someway, his idea was taking shape. Whatever that idea was. The battery, however, was nowhere to be found. That came as no surprise to anyone in the house. None of them had seen a battery in what seemed like forever.

Sandeep turned to Sid and
Alex. “Those tracking devices of yours. They would not happen to use a nine-volt battery?”

Sid said,
“No. Sorry. I wish in this instance they did. But they run on rechargeable lithium fusion chips. They wouldn’t be much good for this. No discharge.”

As it turn
ed out, they were looking in the wrong direction for the battery. Mick watched curiously as Kathryn brought a backless chair from the kitchen into the room adjacent to the dining room, where they all now stood watching her. It then became clear to him. A smoke detector hugged the ceiling, surprisingly still intact. Kathryn slid open the battery compartment and popped the nine volt out.

“
Will this work?” Kathryn said, turning with a smile.

“
Nice job, sweetie. How did you know?”

Kathryn carefully stepped down from the chair with Mick
’s helping hand. “I don’t remember much from before the meteorites. But I do remember you cursing around the house with batteries in your hand trying to find which smoke detector was beeping.”

“
Good job, kiddo.”

Kathryn handed the battery over.

“That’s unreal that we found everything Sandeep needed,” Nate said. “That never happens to us. Like, ever.”

“
Maybe the tides are turning, Nate,” Mick said.

Sandeep quickly got to work. He brought the three items over to the metal kitchen sink. He then brushed the debris
off the steel wool. A small coating of rust painted the metal sink red and brown.

Sandeep handed Mick
the yellow crayon. It happened to be the larger of the two. “Mick, I need you to hold this.” He then broke off the tip of the crayon so the paper was exposed at the top. “If this battery somehow still has anything left within it, we may just have your light. As you would say, keep your fingers crossed.” Deep then put the steel wool in the metal sink, took a breath, and brushed the terminals against the wool. Nothing short of a miracle—the steel wool ignited on the third try, enough for Sandeep to blow on it, kindling the flame just enough for the next part. “Quickly, Mick, this will only last for a moment.”

Mick
understood what he was to do. He pressed the crayon against the dwindling embers of the lit steel wool. Sandeep blew the glowing wool again and the crayon lit.

“
Amazing,” Mick said.

To which Sandeep replied,
“No, Mick. Science.”

Mick
then handed the unlit second crayon to Chester. “In case we need it.” He was surprised this worked in the first place. Having a backup plan seemed like a good idea.

With the burning crayon lighting
his way, Mick slowly descended the stairs to the basement. He knew he needed to act fast. His makeshift light was already on borrowed time.